The Real Reason Why I'm Doing This
by Protection 101
Summary: Hermione finally tells Veronica the real reason why she is paying off the Serpents on her father's behalf.


**The Yearly 365 Challenge**

 **Prompt #351 (Food) Orange Juice**

Sighing as she picked up the glass of orange juice she took a sip. She looked across the table into her daughter's eyes.

Veronica lifted her left eye brow high on her brow. "What is it mother?" She asked in a cold firm voice.

Hermione lowered the glass back to the table. "How long are you going to be angry with me?"

"How long are you going to keep lying to me?" Veronica barked back. Her back stiffened.

Hermione closed her eyes then opened them. "I'm sorry that I was trying to protect you Veronica. I know that you are not a little child any longer. You haven't been for a very very long time now." She sighed as she leaned back in her chair. "I didn't want you to lose your trust in both of your parents in one full swoop."

"My trust in daddy … in father will never return." Veronica sighed. "But my trust in you will come back Mami. But you can't keep me in the dark. Not with your affair with Fred Andrews … or you paying off Serpents for father." Her eyes narrowed. "I get the affair. I just don't understand why you want to have anything to do with the Serpents. You told me when I was still a little child about how bad they were when you grew up … how you never wanted anything to do with them." She shook her head. "I just don't understand why you are helping father."

Hermione sighed. "I have to now." She didn't break eye contact with her daughter. "There's more to it then simply helping your father out Ronnie. Much more. I have to keep a personal watch on them now."

"I can protect myself Mami." Veronica lifted her chin.

Hermione thinnly smiled. "I know you can dear." Her eyes drifted to the side. Then she met her daughter's once more. "You have a right to know _why_ I must now deal with the Serpents."

Veronica waited for her mother to find the right words.

"There is one thing that I left out when I told you about the Serpents." Hermione spoke.

Veronica stiffened. "Alice was … or still is part of the Serpents." She felt dread run down her spine as she read the truth in her mother's eyes.

"You can never escape the Serpents." Hermione spoke in a low voice. "FP is learning this. He knows that now that Jughead is of age … the moment he is thrown behind bars then Jughead _must_ become a Serpent in his stead."

Veronica swallowed thickly. Her eyes grew deathly hard.

Hermione took a breath. "I am making sure that no matter what happenes that the Serpents _do not_ go after Betty or her siblings. Your father luckily managed to do this one thing right in his life. He managed to be in charge of the Serpents. You are safe because of whom Hiram Lodge is. No other reason." She thining smiled. "I'm just ensuring that Betty and her siblings are safe. I'm paying off Alice's debt to them."

"What if money won't be enough?" Veronica hard voice spoke. "What if they demand more."

Hermione looked her daughter in the eyes. "They won't demand more Veronica. I have made sure." She sighed. "They know that they will not get anything else out of me but money. They fully know that if Alice's children, and any grandchildren are taken into the Serpents then the Lodge family will see the end of each, and every single Serpent."

"Why are you doing this? Why are protecting anything of Alice's?" Veronica shook her head. "You always said that you don't owe Alice Smith anything in life."

"I can not stand back silently and watch innoncent people get pulled into the Serpents due to Alice's choices in her youth." Hermione sighed.

Veronica breathed easier. "Thanks Mami." She spoke as tears rolled freely down her cheeks.

Hermione nodded her head. "If I could Betty out of that house right now then I would do that also." She fully knew of her daughter's deep love for Betty Cooper. Although her daughter has yet to speak of it with her. "But so far I can't find a legal right to get Betty away from Alice. But I'm not giving up."

Veronica bowed her head as her arms wrapped around her thin waist.


End file.
